King Felix II and Knight-Captain Rhea reached the coordinates provided by the Nomads. The entrance was not a grand gate or a shimmering portal, but a jagged, rusted drainage pipe buried beneath a century of silt and un-aesthetic scrub.
"This is the 'Devil's Throat'," Rhea whispered, her hand on the hilt of her non-Flow dagger. "It was the original waste-run for the first palace, long before the Global Flow Net was built. It doesn't exist on any modern map."
As they stepped into the damp, dark mouth of the tunnel, the Flow-Neutralizing Dust Armor felt heavy and suffocating. It suppressed Felix's royal aura so completely that he felt like a ghost haunting his own borders.
Ten yards into the tunnel, the path widened into a small, vaulted chamber. The air here was stagnant, smelling of ancient copper and damp earth. On the far wall, illuminated by a faint, natural phosphorescence in the stone, was a massive, weathered mural.
It was not a work of Imperial art. It was crude, violent, and devoid of any Focus.
The mural depicted a younger, gaunt version of the Original Felix I. He wasn't the gilded King of the archives; he looked like a feral, desperate man. The central image showed him standing over a kneeling, weeping young girl—her face was unmistakably a younger version of Evelyn.
He was holding a jagged, un-refined crystal to her temple, literally draining the light from her eyes to power a primitive, ugly machine. The caption, etched in a forgotten dialect, read:
> "FOCUS BORN FROM AGONY. THE FIRST LIGHT IS STOLEN, NOT FOUND."
>
Felix froze. As he stared at the mural, a surge of inherited trauma from his host body's DNA slammed into his mind. He wasn't Grey the streamer for a moment; he was the vessel of a monster.
He saw flashes of the Original Felix's memories: the screams of the girl, the cold satisfaction of the "First Focus," and the realization that he had intentionally broken Evelyn's soul to create the perfect, emotionless strategist.
[SYSTEM ALERT: GENETIC MEMORY UPLOAD DETECTED. IDENTITY FRAGMENT: 'THE CRUELTY OF THE FIRST.' PSYCHIC STRESS: CRITICAL.]
"Your Majesty! Don't look at it!" Rhea shouted, grabbing his shoulder. "It's a psychological tripwire! Evelyn must have known that any descendant of the King—or anyone in his body—would be paralyzed by the guilt of this room."
Felix fell to his knees, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The mural was Evelyn's silent witness. It proved that her revenge wasn't just justified—it was a holy crusade against a bloodline of sociopaths.
Felix forced himself to stand. He looked at the mural once more, not with the eyes of a King, but with the eyes of Grey—the man who had been given a second chance.
"I am not him," Felix whispered, his voice echoing in the tunnel. "He broke her. He created the Shadow. But I am the one who has to face her. I won't let his sins be the end of this world."
He reached out and smeared a handful of the Flow-Neutralizing Dust across the face of the painted Original Felix, symbolically erasing the bastard's legacy.
The psychological weight lifted slightly. They pushed past the mural and into the narrowing tunnel that led directly beneath the border fortifications. They were officially back in the Imperium, moving beneath the feet of the soldiers who were currently fighting a war for a ghost and a liar.
Felix and Rhea are now inside the Imperium's border.